Yesterday I attended a two hour class at the Texas Worm Ranch (www.txwormranch.com) in Garland, Texas; and I am now the proud owner of my very own herd of red wiggler worms! They are in a bin with air holes, bedding, and cover. I fed them yesterday with the bits & bobs left over from my dinner salad; but I am resisting the urge to keep looking at them: worms dislike the light, so unlike a new puppy, they do not appreciate being played with!

What I will have after two weeks of feeding my herd every 3 to 4 days a handful of scraps (no meat, dairy, or grease!) will be lovely vermicompost. Vermicompost is the finished product made up of worm castings (poop), digested food scraps, and microbes. It should be a chocolate brown, fluffy, moist like a wrung out sponge, and smell like the deep forest…aaah!

Sifted finished vermicompost at the Texas Worm Ranch. Vermicompost at home can have more wood mulch in it.

The exciting part of this is not only that I will now be able to compost my kitchen scraps, but that the worms come with a complete ecosystem which makes the fertilizer that they create both healthy for the soil and the plants that grow in it, and nutritious for us who eat the plants and their fruits.

As Heather, owner & head worm whisperer, explained yesterday, the worms are part of a underground system of living microbes that “modern”, very mistaken, gardening information has both ignored and disparaged.

The denizens of this microbiota include fungi (responsible for feeding and watering plants’ roots and extending the reach of plants’ roots); bacteria which eats organic matter; assorted protozoa (amoebas, flagella, & ciliates) that eat bacteria and give off nitrogen (nutrient cycling); and nematodes, that also help keep the ecosystem in balance.

Unfortunately, almost all of these microscopic creatures do not do well in sunlight or in the presence of chemical fertilizers or herbicides. Which means, when traditional (the past couple of generations) advice urges tilling the soil in the Spring, or amending with commercial fertilizers, you will be killing the very microbes that would otherwise feed your plants and improve your soil!!

So best garden practices are:

Keep your garden beds covered with mulch at all times. The mulch can be wood chips (except black walnut) or straw (not hay!). Do not dig the mulch into the soil. Layering should always remain: soil, compost, mulch (from bottom to top).

Cover the walkways between the beds with mulch. This encourages fungi to extend its root system between beds and get even more nutrients to the plants in the beds.

Move the mulch aside to add compost or vermicompost. (Never put red wiggler worms in the garden, even in their own compost. Red wigglers do not burrow so they can not escape heat or cold! Red wigglers are strictly indoor pets; they appreciate the same temperatures we do.) Then put the mulch back over the compost.

Remove mulch where you plant seeds or put in transplants. Keep the seed rows and transplants free of mulch until they have sprouted and established themselves.

Like Permaculture, vermiculture uses the methods that are in place in Nature. The bins that the Texas Worm Ranch uses mimic the forest floor with composted wood chips as bedding and leaves as the top layer.

Worm bins covered in leaves at the Texas Worm Ranch, Garland, Texas.

Treating the soil and the beings (microbes, worms, insects, etc.) who live in it with care and tenderness is, for me, an expression of gratitude for their support of our lives and of respect for them as living creatures.